1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer system architecture. More specifically, the present invention relates to retrieving performance monitor data from an I/O processor.
2. Background Information
Electronic products may be thought of as those products that involve the controlled conduction of electrons or other charge carriers, especially through microprocessors. Examples of electronic products may include radios, computers, work stations, and servers as well as those involved in high-end networking and storage technology. Just about all electronic products employ one or more microprocessors disposed within a chip located on a printed circuit board. These microprocessors engage a computer operating system as well as applications. The main central processing unit within the chip may include a host system. It may be this host system that runs the computer operating system and the applications.
One type of processor within the host system may be a host processor having a host memory. Another type of processor that may be within the host system may be an input-output (I/O) processor. The I/O processor or I/O Platform (IOP) may be a component of the host system that connects the host system memory to an I/O device to process I/O transactions. The I/O device may be a part of or external to the host system through at least one of a first bus and a second bus. Examples of I/O devices include storage devices such as a small computer systems interface (SCSI) controller for a disk and networking devices such as an Ethernet controller.
One main function of a host system may be to transmit data between the host memory and an I/O device via the I/O processor. Transmitted data may include application data, local area network (LAN) packets, and contents stored on a disk. To accomplish data transmission, data handling and processing units such as a core processor and a local memory may be included within the I/O processor. The core processor and the local memory may be coupled to each other through an internal bus and to a messaging unit and a direct memory access unit through that same internal bus. Ideally, the system performs within established parameters.
To measure and monitor various system parameters that contribute to the overall performance of the I/O processor, a performance monitoring unit may be integrated into the I/O processor. Under current standards, the tasks of the performance monitoring unit may include compiling performance measurements on three buses: the first bus; the second bus; and the internal bus. The measurements of the performance monitoring unit can be used to refine code for improved system level performance. However, these measurements exist in raw, binary data for which no mechanism exists that gathers and compiles this raw, I/O performance monitor data into a form that readily may be usable by a computer programmer or operator.
An embodiment includes retrieving performance monitor data from an I/O processor. A performance monitoring driver coupled to a performance monitoring unit may be registered as a private driver with a real time operating system of the I/O processor. Events within the I/O processor may be selected on which to gather data. The selected events may be sent as a message request to the real time operating system. The message request may be translated into the appropriate parameters based on a set of private group parameters that may be accessible by the real time operating system. The message request may be sent as a translated request to the performance monitoring unit. The pieces of data requested by the translated request may be returned to the performance monitoring driver. The pieces of data then may be sent to a location specified in the message request.